Distributed for University of Scranton Press

In Creating a Human World, Trappist monk and scholar Ernest Daniel Carrere explores what it means to be fully human, to live in a shared world, and to resist the easy tendency to flee reality and seek pleasure in material pursuits. To do so he examines the writings of three great modern thinkers—Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, and Søren Kierkegaard—and proposes a new reading of their work in light of his own understanding of New Testament teachings.

Carrere elucidates the paradoxical spiritual truth that salvation lies not in an escape from humanity, but in embracing it. An interdisciplinary tour de force, this book will appeal to anyone interested in philosophy, psychology, religion, or cultural anthropology.

“Creating a Human World is a a valuable and entirely unique contribution that develops an account of why it is that we are tempted to deny our own finitude, clinging to selfish and ultimately destructive illusions of power, and how we might radically open ourselves to a more authentic engagement with the finite world. It is a timely and insightful work, which provides a cogent diagnosis of our spiritual predicament and makes an urgent plea for the only kind of remedy that might help us to live well as contingent beings. Its synthesis of these three thinkers is not duplicated by any other work.” —Rick A. Furtak, Colorado College

Vanessa Rumble, Boston College

"If making room for the Other is a watchword of contemporary phenomenology, Carrere's Creating a Human World is a reminder of the concrete dimensions of the task. With Kierkegaard and Heidegger as his guides, Carrere faces the baffling reversals of Freud's theory of instincts and traces an eye-opening reading of the enigma which dominates Beyond the Pleasure Principle--that of a death instinct which would shield us from our mortality. This is a compelling presentation of the thought of Kierkegaard, Freud, and Heidegger, one which does justice to their strenuous, and at time courageous, pursuit of our human reality."

Contents

Acknowledgments

Fore-Sight

Prologue

1. To Be or Not to Be

Ego, Eros, and the Pleasure Principle

2. Symbiosis and Seduction

Kierkegaard, Freud, and das Man

3. Individual Integrity

Heidegger's Dasein

4. The Trauma of Death

Studies on Hysteria

5. Primordial Finitude

Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety

6. Dynamics of Rejection and Retrieval

Freud and Heidegger

7. A Shared World

Exodus and Beyond

8. Celebrations

Opening Horizons and Heidegger's Way

9. Embracing the Earth

Kierkegaard and Kenosis

10. Beginning Anew

Envoi and Cross-Cultural Entrée

Notes

Bibliography

Index

For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu